Lust from the Tarot of Thoth by Lady Frieda Harris, 1943
Libertinism and Spirituality between Desire and Rebellion
Commonly, the term ‘libertinism’ is used with the meaning of licentious-ness in relation to unrestrained and lascivious moral or social behaviour. It actually has a long philosophical history with roots in antiquity, in which sensuality is often only one aspect. The various forms of libertinism when placed in contrast with religious dogmatism and more moderate forms of philosophical reflection – spread through clandestine channels in which we frequently come across intersections with alternative and eso-teric forms of spirituality. Special attention is devoted to Giacomo Casanova, whose intellectual and sensual libertinism was not bereft of interest in the esoteric dimension.
The conference is organized jointly by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, the Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (HHP) at the University of Amsterdam, and the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity School.
programmE
16 December
9:30 – 10:00 Welcome greetings
- Francesco Piraino (Fondazione Cini / Ca’ Foscari)
- Charles Marshall Stang (CSWR – Harvard Divinity School)
- Marco Pasi (HHP – University of Amsterdam)
10:00 – 11:00 Greek and Early Christian Period
- Matthew J. Dillon (Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School), “Libertine Gnosticism and Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles”
- Charles Marshall Stang (Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School), “Monastic and Mystical Libertinism: The Anxiety around Apatheia in the Syriac Christian Tradition”
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – 12:30 Middle Ages
- Denis Renevey (University of Lausanne), “Richard Rolle (c.1300–49), ermite et libertin avant l’heure: Religious Rebellion and Sensorial Mysticism in North Yorkshire”
- Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam) “Iberian Converts and Forced Migrants of Jewish and Muslim Descent: Freethought, Atheism, and Libertinism”
14:00 – 15:30 Reinassance
- Maria Koutsouris (Boston University), “Platonic Libertinism: Esoteric and Erotic Apotheosis in Marsilio Ficino and Aleister Crowley”
- Adrien Mangili (FNS / University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès) “Mages and Libertines from Pomponazzi to Gaffarel”
- Federico Barbierato (University of Verona), “Ways of Believing and Unbelieving: Seventeenth-Century Libertinism and the Venetian Experience”
17 December
10:00 – 11:00 Judaism
- Jonathan Cahana-Blum (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “ ‘They that Prepare the Ground May Have to Wade through the Marshes of Sin’: Susan and Jacob Taubes’s Jewish Gnostic Cult in 1950’s New York and Jerusalem”
- Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University) “Mystical Nihilism and the Philosophical Skepticism of Faith”
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – 12:30 “The East”
- Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus University), “Sufi Libertinism”
- Paride Stortini(Ghent University), “Desire to Know Desire: Religion, Repression, and Sexuality in the Interwar Japanese Movement ‘Erotic Grotesque Nonsense’ ”
14:00 – 15:30 17th century
- Elena Grazioli (University of Milan), “Casanova: Libertinism and the Shaping of Autobiographical Identity”
- Carlo Bosi (Mozarteum University, Salzburg), “Libertinism, Early Venetian Opera and the Power of Eros”
- Lieven De Maeyer (Ruusbroec Institute at Antwerp University), “Freedom from Sin, or Freedom to Sin? Libertinism and/as Quietism in Late 17th Century France”
18 December
10:00 – 11:30 Contemporary
- Dell Rose (Swedenborg Library Chicago / University of Amsterdam), “The Sacredness of Sin: D’Annunzio amongst the Philosophers of Filth”
- Piero Latino (CELLF – Sorbonne Université / University of Pisa) “From Couliano’s ‘Erotic Pneumophantasmology’ to Corbin’s ‘Metaphysic of Love’: The Spiritual Nature of Eros between Libertinism and the Religion of Love in Literature”
- Christina Oakley Harrington (Independent historian of religion) “The Feminist Libertinism of Early Wicca”
11:30 – 12:00 Coffee break
12:00 – 13:00 Contemporary
- Matouš Mokrý (Masaryk University) “Literary Libertinism in the ‘Deofel Quintet’ of the Order of Nine Angles and Antinomian Esoteric Initiation”
- Gordan Djurdjevic (Independent scholar) “ ‘The Most Sublimely Austere Ethical Precept’: Aleister Crowley’s Doctrine of ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ and Its Complicated Relationship with Libertinism”
14:30 – 15:30 Plenary
The conference will be held in English.
Booking
Lust from the Tarot of Thoth by Lady Frieda Harris, 1943
